Hell No? The New Museum's latest use of 'we'

"Hell No!" was taken in March 2010 in Williamsburg, NYC

The New Museum opened its latest show Free tuesday night. It's hard to judge an exhibition during an art opening, mostly because it's a party and not a time to look at a new hanging (interestingly the after-party is the only part of the night that suggests the true purpose of such gatherings). Anyways, because of that I wouldn't judge the curating but I will judge the curatorial statement.

Inspired by “ Dispersion” (2001–), an essay by artist Seth Price, the show brings together works that tackle "the increased dispersion of culture, by examining how its circulation and reception has changed across mediums from print, to video, and to the web. In light of the way we now experience political events and pop culture, Price offers a new description of public space and questions the viability of public art as we understand it."

So Free is about the increasingly free-flowing circulation of information in 'our' day and age, its implications and how it has affected 'our' relation to and in public space. While this is definitely a theme worth an exhibition (and many more), there's a disconcerting use of all-encompassing words - such as we, culture, pubic space, dispersion, information - that dilute these complicated realities into smooth processes and make the art/show difficult to take seriously.

The most obvious of these vacuous uses is of the term 'we'.

Who is 'we'? Is it the artists' and New Museum staff's class and generation? People born between the Oil Crisis and the fall of the Berlin Wall, with high degrees, a certain creative edge and all living in NYC (12 out of 21 of the artists) or at least a Western metropole (all artists)? If that is the case, then yes that 'we' does have a different way of exchanging information and experiencing the public realm, otherwise the 'we' must be nuanced - put more bluntly exchanged for "the New Museum's target audience." It isn't a question of how the 'we' excludes those who do not own a computer, do not speak English or are living under the level of poverty but rather considering the people who are part of the Western 'popular culture' and 'public space' are not necessarily following youtube trends, responding to Yahoo! answers, staying updated on their urban landscape via Google Maps and socializing on chatroulette.

In a way the use of 'we' illustrates the paradox of the net art community: they make claims and believe they are asking questions on the  popular while dialoguing only with a niche of people who aren't part of the popular.

If this is what defines an avant-garde I think the show would have been better off reconciling the popular this avant-gardism claims to embody with the popular of the 'we' the museum says it wants to explore.

This video accompanies this post just because it's web related, and it sums the both very popular (we've all seen at least one of these) and very exclusiveness (who has seen all of them) of 'web' culture.